


Of Oil and Water

by buttercups3



Category: Revolution (TV)
Genre: Ben Matheson p.o.v., Gen, LJ 60 prompts in 60 days
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-08-01
Updated: 2013-08-02
Packaged: 2017-12-22 01:23:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,882
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/907228
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/buttercups3/pseuds/buttercups3
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An exploration of the brothers Matheson at different points in their lives from Ben's perspective, beginning with their mother's death when they were children, dipping into Ben's college years and Miles's enlistment, their rivalry over Rachel, and into the Blackout.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Ding, Dong our Mom is Dead

**Author's Note:**

> Written as part of the LJ 60 prompts in 60 days challenge, so chapter one addresses the prompt: wired. Thinking about how the two brothers are wired in their own ways inspired the story.

**Prompt: _Wired_**

Bright crimson oozes from the corner of Miles's finger and blends in with the reddish of his lips, Ben observes irritably. Miles is sucking at it so hard, he might as well be a vampire desperately clinging to his immortality. His nails are dirty, whether from consuming an excess of Oreos and then picking them out of his teeth or from digging in the dirt all morning (that’s where the lurid grass stain on his butt came from too).

“Stop biting your nails, Miles,” Ben can’t help but chide through gritted teeth, though he’s said it a million times before, and he knows he’s a nag. But the boys don’t have a mother anymore to nag them – and that’s supposed to be your mother’s job. She’s dead as of yesterday morning. Miles is just nine years old (Ben, twelve), and now they are motherless children. Isn’t there some song about that? Ben tries to remember.

“Stop jiggling your leg,” Ben adds to his kid brother. He notes that Miles hasn’t stopped biting his nails yet, despite the self-mutilation. Miles is lapping at his bleeding index finger now like a puppy, all the while holding Ben’s gaze as if to say: _Screw you. You can’t tell me what to do._ Miles doesn’t stop jiggling his leg either.

Miles is this remarkable combination of hyperactivity and space cadet – it can be discombobulating for the unschooled in the ways of the youngest Matheson. Remarkable, not in a good way – in a how-the-hell-did-this-person-come-to-pass sort of way.

It must be the sugar from the Oreos.

“You’re so wired. Try not to embarrass us,” Ben finishes, reaching over to still Miles’s leg with a firm but not cruel hand. After all, appearing civilized is important right now considering they’re in the lobby of the funeral home following _the viewing_. Now that is a strange thing humans have cooked up to deal with grief. Ben doesn’t understand it at all. Looking at the waxy, gray skin of his mother didn’t make him feel any better about the fact that they had spent the last year cleaning up her green bile, force-feeding her liquid slop, and watching her wince in pain whenever she tried to inch her way off the couch. It didn’t make him feel better that he was now a motherless child. Cancer had washed its ugly, suctiony tentacles over their lives and moved smugly on to claim other peoples’ loved ones. He didn’t have any desire to remember her in its chokehold.

Ben knows it is now his job to care for Miles, because there’s something wrong with Miles. He can’t put his finger on what it is. But maybe some people are just born with personality defects? Dad sure won’t be any help, because Dad is cracked from the war. Vietnam: another big, scary monster like Cancer. It didn’t take Dad’s life, but it made him quiet and resigned and…well, gone, for the most part. Unreliable. Ben doesn’t even know where Dad is at the moment. Probably in the bathroom, washing his hands again. He must have washed his hands seventy times this morning before leaving the house.

Ben hopes they can just go home soon. The doleful looks of passersby are wearing on him. Their faux-sympathetic vibes only make him long to lock himself in the basement and play Final Fantasy (which Miles thinks is boring. Miles is still stuck on Super Mario Brothers 3, which Ben has tried to explain to Miles is for simpletons.)

Ben senses Miles’s intense brown eyes are still honed in on Ben’s cranium. “Still staring at me, Squid?” He calls Miles squid, because – well, if he’s honest, because Miles hates it – but the nickname first originated because Miles was always tracking dirt into the house. It looked like ink on the white carpet, and Mom could never get it off no matter how hard she scrubbed. Even when she could still scrub.

“Shut up, stupid,” Miles mumbles, ripping his eyes away at last.

He’s always staring, and heck if Ben knows what he’s staring about. He’s tried before to imagine what happens in Miles’s head, because it’s so foreign to him. Ben reads and plays video games and plays computer games – wired, always wired – while Miles runs off with his friend Bass in the woods to do what? Push each other around? It seems that way to Ben. They come back with magic marker Ms on their forearms and mud caked on their Converse hightops.

Sometimes late at night when Ben and Miles can’t sleep (Ben can tell when Miles isn’t asleep in his twin bed, because he lies very, very still and stares straight up at the ceiling), Ben will even ask: _What are you thinking about, Miles?_ just to see if he can pry it out of him. Miles answers: _Nothing_. Or: _Lunch_. Come to think of it, Miles is probably messing with Ben, but it all has the effect of making Ben imagine Miles like a shallow pool of water. Reflective, shiny, maybe even intriguing, but if you threw in a pebble you’d hit bottom real fast.

After they’ve finally viewed enough of their dead mother and gone home, Ben is playing Final Fantasy, really engrossed in the game, when he smells Miles before he sees him out of the corner of his eye. That’s because Miles’s socks reek of something in between urine, earthworms, and toxic waste. They always do.

“Your feet stink,” Ben announces without looking away from the screen.

“Shut up,” Miles mumbles. “ _You_ stink,” he adds half-heartedly, like he knows how lame his comeback is. It’s the personality defect again. If Miles ever talks, it’s like he wishes he hadn’t bothered. Ben talks a lot for him in public. He’s talked for him all day today and is exhausted of it. Ben just shakes his head sadly to confirm that indeed this wasn’t worth saying.

Miles sits close enough to Ben on the couch for him to catch a whiff of the familiar head sweat as well - again urine but mixed with saline. Siblings know how all the different parts of each other smell. It’s really intimate and kind of revolting, now that Ben thinks about it. This is a really screwed up thing to think, but here it comes: they were both _inside_ their mother once – sure at different times, but isn’t that the most intimate thing ever? And gross. Ben shifts his eyes to glance at Miles for the fleetingest of moments. Miles looks very lost, and though he’s always been a tall kid with over-sized feet, he looks downright small.

Ben feels bad for Miles, even if it seems like he doesn’t. But it’s hard to be nice right now. It’s hard to even remember how to be nice. Ben and Miles have never been close. The only thing they ever had in common was their mother. And she’s – _everyone together now_ – dead. D. e. a. d.


	2. Lost in the Sand

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’ll be jumping around a bit in time, so I’m not finished with the Matheson boys as children by any means. Here is a flash-forward to Ben’s grad school years, while Miles is away at war. Yep, it's already changed to Mature. I tried, general audiences. I tried. ;)

_Dear Rachel,_

_You want to hear that Bass and I are out of harm’s way, I suppose, but we’re Marines, so we never are. We like it this way. War is boring otherwise, and when we’re bored we get into trouble – especially Bass. I can’t tell you where we are exactly, but we’re ok, everything’s still attached, and we’re no crazier than when we started._

_You want to know what it feels like to kill someone. That’s the strangest thing anyone’s ever asked me. Why would you want to know a thing that like? I guess my answer is that it feels different killing a member of the Taliban versus killing a civilian. Yes, I’ve done that. It’s hard to explain, Rachel, but sometimes you really think the person running at you is holding a grenade and then after you shoot them you realize it was a pomegranate. That’s because sometimes it IS a woman running at you with a grenade and sometimes even a child. You’re a scientist – you tell me how the fuck you explain a thing like that? How people could hate us so much, they’d sacrifice their own kid to kill one fucking Marine?_

_I suppose you’ll hate me now at least a little knowing what I’ve done. Truth is I hate myself sometimes. Sometimes I hope to God I come back from this and other times I think it’d be easier to just…not._

_Don’t worry about all that. I know it sounds like I’m depressed, but it’s just the way you think out here. I wish you could see the stars in the desert, Rachel. It’s like…the Milky Way actually has colors – yellow and pink. I can’t even explain it. I’ve never seen anything like it._

_Sorry this letter didn’t really say much. But you already know that about me. I don’t have much to say._

_Yours,_

_Miles_

Ben looks at the word ‘yours’ ten, maybe twenty times, as if it’s in Sanskrit or Chinese. He’s never gotten a letter from Miles, not in his whole life (nor has he ever written his brother), so perhaps Miles signs all of his correspondence this way. Or perhaps he doesn’t. Perhaps Miles _is_ actually Rachel’s. A bucket of ice-cold acid splashes the pit of Ben’s stomach. He doesn’t even hear Rachel come home or pad softly into the bedroom.

“Ben. Going through my drawer, I see,” Rachel intones calmly. He’s got to hand it to her – there is very little that visibly unnerves her.

“Were you looking for something in particular? I keep the lube in there, for instance,” Rachel continues, a jagged, nasty edge creeping into her voice.

He’s angry at her for this particular gibe. Sex has always been a source of contention in their relationship – the fact that she wants it more than him, for one thing. She says it’s not normal (hints that it’s not manly), even suggested on one occasion that he get his testosterone levels checked. And then, when it comes to their actual bedroom habits, he knows it’s repetitive, but he just likes what he likes. Her on top, her breasts squished against his chest just so. He doesn’t even bother to put his own dick in her – let’s her do it. “You can be so damn passive, Ben,” she’ll complain from time to time, and then she won’t for a while, and Ben will think (hope) everything is fine.

So yes, the joke about the lube hits him where it hurts. Honestly, Ben hadn’t intended to snoop in the drawer of her nightstand, but it’s like some undeniable force of nature pulled him there. Rachel has been vaguely off lately, like the reverse image of herself in a mirror. He didn’t know what he was looking for, but he wasn’t expecting to find a rubber-banded stack of letters from his deployed little brother.

“How long has Miles been writing you?” Ben attempts to even out his quavering voice.

The fact that Rachel has any intimacy with Miles that Ben didn’t know about (even if it does stop at just letters) makes him physically sick. It’s difficult to explain the tangle of emotions that surrounds the mere idea of his little brother. Miles, more than any other human, is the culmination of the loss, hurt, shame, and abandonment of Ben’s childhood. All Ben ever wanted was to grow up and leave that sinister phase behind. He longed to drink wine and have a job where he wore a tie even as a kid. There is so much Ben resents (even loathes) in Miles’s personal habits, too – his debauched drinking, his smug acquiescence to the Marines, his quite brooding – but even so, if Ben is honest, he is desperately jealous of his kid brother. Miles has this odd pull on the people around him, as if without even saying anything, people would follow Miles to the edge of a cliff, where with just a shift of his eyes Miles could convince them to jump. Ben wouldn’t jump, but it would be more out of spite than from not wanting to. Miles is that bewitching. Can anyone blame Ben for wanting Rachel to stay away from Miles?

Rachel replies, “Since he deployed. Miles deserves to have _someone_ keep tabs on him. You sure as hell don’t write him.” Rachel’s lips are pinched.

“Fine, but why you?”

Rachel makes a sound between a laugh and a sigh of exasperation. “Because he’s my brother-in-law? Because we love him, and we’re all he has besides Bass? Really, Ben. What has gotten into you?”

“Miles and I don’t talk. We see each other once a year or so at Christmas. That’s the extent of our obligation to each other. I’d appreciate it if you’d respect the choice I’ve made.”

“What happened between you two to make you so…? Jesus, Ben. You read _that_ letter of all letters; don’t you even care how much the war is hurting him?” She pries the parchment out of Ben’s fingers and refolds it carefully, one might even say, lovingly.

Emotion has clearly overridden Ben’s ability to be reasonable, but he refuses to give into the baseness of being human. He takes a few swallows of air before answering, “Nothing happened. We’re just different people. You don’t choose your family, so why should you have to like them? And yes, for your information, I do worry about the war hurting him. But it was his own damn decision to enlist. I’m sorry,” Ben swiftly apologizes. He doesn’t like swearing – it’s too much like Miles and Dad. He turns away and grips a nearby chair.

Rachel sits on the bed and gathers her elbows into her arms, the fullness of her cleavage spilling over. Ben feels a pang of regret. He doesn’t want to push Rachel even further away.

“Rach. It was wrong of me to go through your drawer. Forgive me?” he tries.

Her eyes briefly flick to him and back to her knees as she apparently loses herself in thought. “I forgive you,” she agrees, seemingly more because it’s what one says to one’s spouse at a time like this. “ _You_ could write to him, you know.”

“I don’t want to. I’d prefer if you didn’t either, honestly. But it’s your decision,” Ben adds, trying to keep the begrudging edge out of his voice.

Rachel’s lake-blue eyes now fix him in their stare. He can’t read the expression: sorrow, ache, or even outrage?

“I’ll stop writing him then.”

Even if it is bile he sees there, he’s relieved to hear her say so.

* * *

 

It’s two weeks later that they get the call.

Rachel is the picture of pallor, the phone dangling in her fingers, as she places one foot in front of the other – a former paraplegic relearning to walk.

“It’s Bass,” comes her other-worldly voice.

And this, of course, makes no sense whatsoever. Bass is at war. Ben doesn’t even bother to stop typing the email, before shooting out of the side of his mouth in clipped irritation: “Hun, just let me finish this.” Then he realizes his error and freezes. “What?”

“Bass.”

Now Ben can actually hear Bass’s voice crackling through the phone: “Rachel? You there?”

As if her arms are trailing through water, she lifts the receiver back to her mouth and says, “I’m going to put you on speaker.”

“Is Miles dead?” comes out of Ben’s mouth before he’s had time to sanitize his thoughts. This is the only thing that makes senses. Neither Bass nor Miles has ever called them from a warzone before.

Either the connection is bad, or Bass’s voice is wavering on a sea of emotion: “No. He’s been taken captive by the Taliban.”

“What?” Rachel squeaks. “How…?”

“We were on a mission with a lot of inexperienced soldiers,” Bass offers by way of explanation. “I can’t say more.”

“How do you know he’s not…?” Ben can’t shake the image of Miles as a toddler, head half-buried in a sandbox, asphyxiated. Odd, but there it is.

“We didn’t find a body,” Bass begins and says something else Ben can’t force his brain to decode. Before he knows what’s happening, Bass adds, “I'll get Miles back, or I won't come back.” Rachel’s tearful voice pleads something or other, and then the conversation is over. Any question they could think to ask will remain answerless.

Ben has risen to stand without realizing it and now plops back into his chair. He feels Rachel’s eyes on him for a long moment.

“Say something, Ben.”

He doesn’t look up. “What do you want me to say?”

“I don’t know. That he’ll be alright.”

“How can he be alright? He’s probably already dead.” The vicious pessimism, bubbling up, even at a time like this. Cruel to say to her. Cruel to say even to himself. But it can’t be taken back now.

Rachel sobs once – just once – and exits the den. He hears the front door click and doesn’t see her again for hours. By the time she gets home, he’s in bed on his side, staring into the dark. He hears her sniffing softly as the protracted hours of the insomniac stretch out before them. Ben doesn’t even bother to close his eyes. He doesn’t want to see the toddler in the sand.


End file.
